1. Field
The present general inventive concept generally relates to a battery to be inserted into a living body, and more particularly, to a tube-structured battery to into a blood vessel of a living body.
2. Description of the Related Art
Living body implantable medical devices, such as an artificial heart, a pacemaker, a video pill, a diagnostic medical center, a drug infusion pump, etc., assist a patient to be diagnosed and cured. However, since the living body implantable medical devices have large sizes to give burdens to patients, many patients who have been implanted with the living implantable medical devices complain of inconveniences of wearing sensations.
Therefore, many efforts to reduce the sizes of the living body implantable medical devices have been made. However, since a volume of a primary battery occupying a considerable portion between about 20 v % and about 60 v % in these devices is great, remarkably reducing the sizes of the medical devices is limited.
In particular, a life of primary battery ends after a predetermined time, and thus an implanted device is to be periodically replaced through a surgical operation.
A living body implantable secondary battery has been developed and commercialized. As a charging method of the secondary battery, there is a method of charging the secondary battery by using an external radio frequency (RF) or a method of charging the secondary battery by wire through a terminal exposed to the outside. This method causes a continuous charging, and the charging method using the terminal exposed to the outside causes inconveniences to patients. Also, the charging method using the RF causes a safety problem.
According to a report, a size of a device which does not give repulsion toward wearing sensations to patients and does not give pains to the patients when implanting the device is 0.5 cm (length)×500 μm (width)×200 μm (thickness). Therefore, a size of a battery used as power of the device is to be reduced in an ultra-small size. In this case, a capacity of the battery is also reduced and thus cannot be used for a long time.
In order to solve this problem, there have appeared a micro-sized living body implantable biofuel battery which generates electricity from Glucose existing in a living body.
The biofuel battery has a micro-size but oxidizes the Glucose of the living body to self-generate the electricity and thus continuously supplies electricity to a device implanted into the living body. However, voltage and current densities generated from the electricity are very low, and thus it is impossible to apply the living body implantable biofuel battery as an enough power source to supply power to a living body implantable device. Also, in consideration of convenience of a user, a micro-sized biofuel battery to be inserted into a blood vessel is requested.